Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Glenn Kramon, assistant managing editor of the New York Times: "Climate change is one of the few subjects so important that we need to be oblivious to cycles and just cover it as hard as we can all the time"

In a year strange weather worldwide, climate change reporting by the world's journalists fell another 2 percent, according to DailyClimate.org's archive of media coverage. ..."I ask myself, 'In 20 years, what will we be proudest that we addressed, and where will we scratch our head and say why didn't we focus more on that?'" said Glenn Kramon, assistant managing editor of the New York Times...."Climate change is one of the few subjects so important that we need to be oblivious to cycles and just cover it as hard as we can all the time," Kramon said....Kramon, the Times' assistant managing editor, attributed last year's uptick in the paper's coverage to the fruition of a four-year-old effort to group top reporters on a separate environment desk.

The paper has six reporters in the cluster, plus others covering the subject from other desks, as well as several editors – in particular the environment editor, Sandy Keenan – who all are "very comfortable" with the topic, he said.

"That's just part of a bigger effort by the paper," Kramon added. "I think everyone here agrees that if it's not the most important story, it's one of the most important stories."